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Academic Commons Search Resultsen-usMEAs in the WTO: Silence Speaks Volumeshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:171420
Horn, Henrik; Mavroidis, Petros C.http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8ZC80W6Wed, 12 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000This study contributes to the debate concerning the appropriate role of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in WTO law, and in particular, in WTO dispute settlement. The distinguishing feature of the study is that it seeks to address the relationship between MEAs and WTO law in light of the reason why the parties have chosen to separate their obligations into two bodies of law without providing an explicit nexus between them. The basic conclusion is that legislators’ silence concerning this relationship should speak volumes to WTO adjudicating bodies: MEAs should not be automatically understood as imposing legally binding obligations on WTO Members. But MEAs could be used as sources of factual information, and their usefulness might extend even further, assuming certain conditions have been met. JEL Classification:Law, Environmental lawpm2030LawArticlesMerger control procedures and institutions: A comparison of the EU and US practicehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:171417
Kovacic, William E.; Mavroidis, Petros C.; Neven, Damien J.http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8348HCHWed, 12 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000The objective of this paper is to discuss and compare the role that different constituencies play in US and EU procedures for merger control. We describe the main constituencies (both internal and external) involved in merger control in both jurisdictions and discuss how a typical merger case would be handled under these procedures. At each stage, we consider how the procedure unfolds, which parties are involved, and how they can affect the procedure. Our discussion reveals a very different ecology. EU and US procedures differ in terms of their basic design and in terms of the procedures that are naturally associated with these alternative designs. On the one hand, there is a single investigator and decision maker operating under a symmetric mandate in the EU and on the other hand, an investigation and settlement operating under the threat of a court decision in case of challenge only in the US. The EU has developed numerous procedures and has granted extensive rights to the parties in the context of these procedures in order to provide some guarantee that the Commission’s role as investigator and decision maker at first instance is not abused. By contrast, the US procedures appear to be rather informal, the balance in the investigation and evaluation of the merger being provided by the credible threat of a court decision. With a strong federal government that has extensive competences for regulation, merger control on competition grounds is subject to the additional public interest test of regulators in the US. Such additional control is weak in the EU, which has more limited competences for regulation. In addition, both the executive and the legislative powers are more fully developed at the federal level in the US. Both the executive power and the legislative seem to be in position to wield greater influence on enforcement in the US than is the case in the EU.Lawpm2030LawWorking papersDriftin’ too far from shore – Why the test for compliance with the TBT Agreement developed by the WTO Appellate Body is wrong, and what should the AB have done insteadhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:162428
Mavroidis, Petros C.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20774Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Following years of silence, the WTO Appellate Body (AB) issued almost simultaneously three reports dealing with issues coming under the aegis of the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). The three Panel reports were hard to reconcile, and this feature in and of itself made the task of the AB quite onerous. Some progress has been made and some clarifications have been introduced, but overall the AB has yet to come to grips with a coherent approach regarding the understanding of the TBT Agreement. The main argument in this paper is that the AB, in designing its test for consistency with the TBT Agreement, did not do any different than it would have done had no TBT Agreement existed. It is, nevertheless, response to the question ‘what has the TBT added to the pre-existing legislative arsenal’ that should point to the elements that must be included in developing a test of consistency against which disputes coming under the aegis of the TBT Agreement should be discussed. The suggested approach consists of a two-tier test whereby Panels would first inquire into the innate characteristics of a measure coming under the aegis of the TBT Agreement, before asking the question whether it has also been applied in non-discriminatory manner.International law, Economics, Commerce-Businesspm2030LawArticlesArbitrating Trade Disputes (Who's the Boss)http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:162443
Mavroidis, Petros C.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20775Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000World Trade Organization (“WTO”) dispute settlement has attracted a lot of interest over the years and there is a plethora of academic papers focusing on various aspects of this system. Paradoxically, there is little known about the identity of the WTO judges: since, at the end of the day, the WTO has evolved into the busiest forum litigating state-to-state disputes. There are many writings regarding the appointment process in other international tribunals. At the risk of doing injustice to many papers on this issue, we should mention the following works: Terris et al. look at various courts and especially those with opaque procedures regarding the appointment of international judges; Posner and Yoo on the one hand, and Helfer and Slaughter on the other, reach opposite conclusions regarding the “independence” of courts the composition which does or does not depend on the will of the parties to litigation; Alter examines various fora and concludes that, contrary to domestic process where political branches dominate the process, international judges are less subject to appointment politics or so it seemed. And there is so much more. But there is almost nothing regarding appointments of WTO judges: Elsig and Pollack and Steinberg are, to my knowledge, the only notable exceptions to this effect; the former concentrate on the appointment of the Appellate Body (“AB”) members, while the latter’s focus is on theoretical inquiries regarding, inter alia, the appointment process.International law, Economics, Commerce-Businesspm2030LawArticlesFree Lunches? WTO as Public Good, and the WTO’s View of Public Goodshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:162452
Mavroidis, Petros C.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20778Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000The WTO can be viewed as a public good in that it provides a forum for negotiations which also produces the necessary legal framework to act as a support for agreed liberalization. To avoid any misunderstandings, in this article the discussion focuses on the WTO as a forum and a set of agreements, not on free trade. Since the legal agreements coming under its aegis are for good reasons incomplete, the WTO provides an additional public good by ‘completing’ the original contract through case law. The importance of this feature increases over time as tariffs are driven towards irrelevance. In turn, the WTO has no particular attitude towards public goods provided by its Members.International law, Economics, Commerce-Businesspm2030LawArticlesNo Outsourcing of Law? WTO Law as Practiced by WTO Courtshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:150112
Mavroidis, Petros C.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:14098Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000This article provides a critical assessment of the corpus of law that the adjudicating bodies of the World Trade Organization (WTO)—the Appellate Body (AB) and panels—have used since the organization was established on January 1, 1995. After presenting a taxonomy of WTO law, I move to discern, and to provide a critical assessment of, the philosophy of the WTO adjudicating bodies, when called to interpret it. In discussing the law that WTO adjudicating bodies have used, I distinguish between sources of WTO law and interpretative elements. This distinction will be explicated in part I below. Part II provides a taxonomy of the sources of WTO law, and part III a taxonomy of the interpretative elements used to illuminate those sources. Part IV concludes.International law, Economics, Commerce-Businesspm2030LawArticlesThe Genesis of the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services)http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:150119
Marchetti, Juan A.; Mavroidis, Petros C.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:14100Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000The Uruguay Round services negotiations saw the light of day amidst pressures from lobbies in developed countries, unilateral retaliatory actions, and ideological struggle in the developing world. The final outcome, the GATS, certainly characterized by a complex structure and awkward drafting here and there, is not optimal but is an important first step towards the liberalization of trade in services. This article traces the GATS negotiating history, from its very beginning in the late 1970s, paying particular attention to the main forces that brought the services dossier to the multilateral trading system (governments, industries, and academics), and the interaction between developed and developing countries before and during the Uruguay Round. We will follow the actions, positions, and negotiating stances of four trading partners -- Brazil, the European Union, India, and the United States -- that were key in the development of the GATS. Finally, we will, indicatively at least, try to attribute a 'paternity' (or, rather, a 'maternity') to some key features and provisions of the agreement.International law, Economics, Commerce-Businesspm2030LawArticlesAlways look at the bright side of non-delivery: WTO and Preferential Trade Agreements, yesterday and todayhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:150115
Mavroidis, Petros C.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:14099Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000The disciplining of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) by the WTO has been 'relaxed' recently as a result of the new context (the Transparency Mechanism) within which notified PTAs are being multilaterally reviewed. This is probably a blessing for a number of reasons, including the success of the multilateral trading system in bringing tariffs down over the years (and the ensuing reduced trade diversion), the fact that modern PTAs deal with many non-trade issues as well (for which no WTO disciplines exist), and the recent empirical literature suggesting overall positive welfare implications for those participating in similar schemes. This paper discusses these and other reasons to support the view that the WTO should rather focus on the multilateral agenda instead of diverting its attention towards disciplining PTAs. In more concrete terms, this paper argues in support of the thesis that the Transparency Mechanism should not be simply a de facto substitute of the previous regime (where outlawing a PTA could not a priori be excluded), but the de jure new forum to discuss PTAs within the multilateral trading system, at least for the time being. A first do-no-harm-policy is one of the rationales for the thesis advocated here.International law, Economics, Commerce-Businesspm2030LawArticlesThe case for auctioning countermeasures in the WTOhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:115453
Bagwell, Kyle; Mavroidis, Petros C.; Staiger, Robert W.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:472Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000A major accomplishment of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations in creating the World Trade Organization (WTO) was the introduction of new dispute settlement procedures. These procedures were intended to provide a significant step forward, relative to GATT, in the settling of trade disputes, in large part by ensuring that violations of WTO commitments would be met with swift retaliation ("suspension of concessions") by the affected trading partners. While the dispute settlement procedures of the WTO indeed represent a considerable improvement over those in GATT, nine years of experience under the new procedures suggests that significant problems of enforcement remain in the WTO.Economicskwb8, pm2030Business, Economics, LawWorking papersThe case for tradable remedies in WTO dispute settlementhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:115678
Bagwell, Kyle; Mavroidis, Petros C.; Staiger, Robert W.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:481Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000It has been almost two years since the process leading to the reform of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) was initiated. The Ministerial Conference in Doha provided the legal mandate (§30) to do so. Negotiations started in early March 2002 and were supposed to be concluded by end of May 2003. This has not been the case. The situation is quite ambivalent from a purely legal perspective right now: negotiators seem to take the view (WTO Doc. TN/DS/9 of 6 June 2003) that although the deadline for concluding negotiations has lapsed, they still have the mandate to continue negotiating, which is what they have been doing ever since. The negotiations so far reveal convergence on some issues and divergence on others. The proposals with a "high level of support" have been reflected in a document (WTO Doc. TN/DS/9 of 6 June 2003) and those that could not gather momentum are, at least for the time being, kept aside (although, technically, they are still on the negotiating table since it is up to the country proposing them to introduce them at some stage).1 In this paper we essentially focus on one proposal of the latter kind, the Mexican proposal to allow WTO Members to trade their rights for retaliation. This proposal is definitely the most ambitious and innovative proposal (judging by the pace of institutional reforms throughout the history of dispute settlement in the GATT/WTO) ever submitted in this context. At the same time, it is a meritorious proposal and deserves to be discussed in a comprehensive manner. This paper aims to offer arguments in this perspective.Economicskwb8, pm2030Business, Economics, LawWorking papersLet's stick together (and break with the past): the use of economic analysis in WTO dispute litigationhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:124864
Mavroidis, Petros C.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:8478Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000The treatment of a number of issues that are being routinely discussed in WTO dispute settlement practice could benefit substantially, were economists to be institutionally implicated in the process. As things stand, the participation of economists in dispute settlement proceedings is infrequent and erratic: for all practical purposes, it depends on the discretion of WTO adjudicating bodies. There is indirect evidence that recourse to such expertise has been made, albeit on very few occasions. Institutional reforms are necessary; otherwise, it seems unlikely that the existing picture will change in the near future. A look into ongoing negotiations on the DSU review however, leaves no scope for optimism in this respect: involving economists in WTO litigation is not a priority-issue.Economicspm2030Economics, LawPresentations